Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Suspected Double-Voting Referred to Prosecutors in Virginia

Local election officials
in Fairfax County, Virginia have referred seventeen cases of suspected
double-voting to the Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney. These individuals
are suspected of having voted in both Maryland and in Fairfax County, Virginia in
the 2012 General Election. Some individuals are suspected of having
double-voted in Maryland and Virginia in multiple elections. Click here for the press release from the Fairfax
County Electoral Board.

This incident
underscores the importance that states share voter registration data on a
regular basis. Programs RNLA have endorsed like ERIC and Crosscheck can help both identity and prevent
illegal double-voting.

However, sharing the
data is useless if states don't act on it after receiving it. It is essential
that officials take decisive action to remove these voters from the rolls once
they receive the data from other states. Secondly, it’s important they refer
suspected instances of voter fraud to prosecutors. Unfortunately Democrats and
their allied liberal groups such as Project Vote and the Brennan Center have
repeatedly worked to prevent officials from taking action based on concerns
that voters will be mistakenly removed from the voter rolls. They ignore the
fact that provisional ballots and other remedial measures can fix any potential
mistakes made by officials. Of course, we all know there is no way to retrieve
a fraudulently cast ballot by a voter that officials should have removed but
did not out of fear that the Democrats would cry "voter
suppression".

There is little that can
be done to stop someone from casting ballots in multiple states without states
sharing this data and acting on it. It is particularly critical in areas with
highly transient populations and in election jurisdictions that border other
states. Fairfax County is both highly transient and shares a border with
Maryland. It would be relatively easy for a voter to vote in-person in both a
Virginia and Maryland polling in the same day, especially since Maryland has
few election integrity protections such as voter ID. Based on the news from the
Fairfax County Electoral Board, it seems like that very well may have been
happening.